This phase has become ultra-logical at an existential level; why are humans obsessed with living? I believe that humans create their own purpose, and I used to derive purpose from work but recently work has been going poorly. I have had bouts of depression - low motivation, low energy, feel as though there is little reason for living.
I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me Prozac to help with the low energy and motivation. I have heard SSRIs are hard to come off of. I'm wondering if this is just a depressive phase and if I should try to move past it without this drug, or if this drug could kick start an improvement in motivation and feeling like there are reasons for living.
Has anyone taken Prozac for similar reasons, and can you share your experience with it -- positives and negatives?
SSRIs can be life-saving, or they can ruin your life. People have different degrees of illness and different reactions. No one can help you figure this out except a doctor.
You can and should get multiple opinions if you don't feel confident in your current psychiatrist's recommendation.
SSRIs can have unpleasant discontinuation effects. These don't affect everyone, and they don't affect people in the same way. I know people on low dose venlafaxine who struggled. I was on high dose venlafaxine for years and stopped almost overnight with no problems. Currently we think only very small numbers of people ahve severe serious enduring problems coming off SSRIs. It is, of course, totally fine for you to examine the risks vs the rewards of taking medication. Personally, and this is only my opinion, meds saved my life and I am glad they were available to me.
You may want to look at an evidence-based talking therapy as well. Cognitive behaviour therapy has good evidence (especially if you do it face to face, one to one, with an experienced therapist). It's a short form therapy so the maximum length of treatment is 21 weeks, but most people need less than that.
Successful treatment with antidepressants will involve waiting a week or two, probably increasing the dose and trying other medications if the one you are using doesn't work or has side effects.
Effexor is also available in generic and it is an SNRI that hits receptors and overall is more effective, but it is harder to quit.
The big negative for some people is that SSRIs suppress the sexual response. This could be anything from "My girlfriend thinks it's great because now I can for two hours" to "I took one tab of Lexapro and I didn't have sex, think about sex, look at porn, anything for a week"
Some people won't care, some people will get into trouble with their partner, some people might get along better with their partner. The effect is dose dependent.
You are living in the 21st century and can partake of it's advances. But also try these other things:
* exercise (if you could two hours of cardio most days that would be ideal) * psychotherapy
also things that work for some people:
* pets (raising chickens is a common southeast asian treatment for depression) * going to church (if you get something out of it and it may or may not be Christian) * volunteer activities: (Most of the Christian churches in my area run a soup kitchen; the lady who used to run it is scheduled for sentencing by a federal court because of what she did at an anti-war protest; it is a mellow scene where nobody will trouble you about religion but will recognize that "good works" can be meaningful to people) * audit use of alcohol and other drugs: many people have problems
I was told: When you find yourself thinking dark thoughts just stop doing it. It's that easy to fix depression, and also that ridiculously hard. Crack it though and you're sorted for life.
Throw away the symptomatic crutch and address the root causes. It's the engineering way.
I didn't really read this book, since this wasn't really new stuff to me, but skimming through it seemed like a pretty good overview:
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Connections-Uncovering-Depressio...